Developed in response to market needs, the combination of products provides novel functionality for the development of label-free high-throughput potency assays for the immuno-oncology space and high-throughput viral cytopathic effects (CPE) assays for the vaccine market, Agilent said.

Faced with fierce competition to fulfill the promise of immuno-oncology therapeutics, pharma researchers are rapidly evolving the approaches used to accelerate clinical success. Similarly, vaccine developers are under unprecedented pressure considering constantly shifting public health threats.

Automated workflows offer the promise of increasing drug candidate screening as a means to more quickly and efficiently translate research into discovery. However, many existing automated workflow solutions still rely on substantial manual intervention steps that hinder throughput and limit the scope of assay development.

Agilent noted that its xCelligence RTCA HT - BioSpa 8 integration offers a label-free, noninvasive, kinetic readout of cell proliferation and cytotoxicity that allows researchers to analyze up to eight 384-well ePlates, increasing throughput and decreasing sample sizes.

The BioSpa 8 incubator provides real-time temperature and CO₂/O₂ control with humidity monitoring. Meanwhile, the xCelligence instrument is equipped with a heated cradle, so cells are protected against unnecessary perturbations and fluctuation of culture conditions during the automated transfer from the incubator.

User-friendly software facilitates automated assays and data analysis, making this a walk-away system for identifying therapeutics to fight disease and providing a degree of automation that is unique to this combination of technologies, Agilent said.